Fritz Warrenberg By Kayla Matt

Fritz was played by my friend Nate.  Beyond that I’m not really sure where to begin with him.  He is a gnome who is an inventor, illusionist, monster chronicler, and purveyor of fair maidens’ affections.  In the actual game, there were very few female characters before Nyx arrived, so Fritz’s dirty old man side rarely appeared.  Once Nyx did show up, he was using magic to pinch her butt every chance he got.  Sadly, Nate and Fritz left the game soon after Nyx appeared, so I never got to see where he would go.  This posed a small problem for me that the other departing characters didn’t have.  Dave who played Nimby was my roommate for a little while, so I got a good idea how Nimby would work through talking to him.  Nimby also lasted longer than Fritz.  Harold who played Aedyn Karwyn was a stat-based player at the time, so he didn’t have a deep personality.  This gave me a nearly blank slate to work with.  Fritz had personality, depth, and a spark about him that was so endearing that I was scared to screw him up.  Nate created an amazing balance between comic relief and wise mentor that it was incredibly daunting.

So, Fritz began as a character who was there with little depth.  I fine-tuned him and evolved him through my years of editing Beginning of a Hero.  It wasn’t intended to be this way.  It was just that I kept feeling like I screwed him up until one day, he just snapped into place.  He is still close to how I remember him in the game, but more inventor than illusionist.  In the game, you can’t really be a famous and highly regarded inventor as a first level.  Again, the benefits of a book over a game is that a character can start with a lot of experience.  This is where I got more of a feel for Fritz and fine-tuned my own ability to have characters who are comical, but can be serious.  It’s funny because with all of my work on Fritz, I really grew attached to the greasy, womanizing, wise, old gnome.

Fritz is also the character who flushed out the gnome race of Windemere and turned them into a global force to be reckoned with.  They turned Windemere from a Middle Earth type place to something closer to a Final Fantasy world with technology blossoming alongside magic.  As the books progress, you will begin to see various high-tech devices such as indoor plumbing and mechanical bridges that can be turned into high archer posts.  So, the technology of Windemere is really all thanks to Fritz.  He is also to blame for gnomes being able to use half of their mind to do one task and the other half to do another task, so gnomes are true multi-taskers.  The final ability that Fritz gave the gnomes was called ‘The Void’.  Gnomes work with dangerous materials, but they rarely seem to die in the explosions that they are responsible for.  I began to wonder this and noticed that Fritz would occasionally pause while working on something and then go back.  The Void is a form of precognition that takes the form of total blackness in a gnome’s mind.  It is a warning that they are following a path that will lead to their death.  The Void lasts only for a second, but it is the reason why gnomes always know where to stand when something is about to happen.

So, that is the origin and influence of Fritz Warrenberg.

2023 Thoughts– Not much else to really say.  Fritz was the character who I used to set the tone and abilities for Windemere’s gnomes.  Out of all of the Luke Callindor’s friends from Beginning of a Hero, he really did have the greatest impact on world-building and setting.  I can’t have a gnomish character without thinking of Fritz.  It was a shame that I couldn’t have him carry on longer in the overall story than he did, but it was the same issue with Nimby and Aedyn Karwyn.  The players left the game during the second adventure, so I had to phase out the characters.  Still, they all had a purpose and left a lasting impression with Fritz being perfect for the role he played.